Diorama shows fabled fight at the O.K. Corral

Display, book reframe 'Shootout at the O.K. Corral' (it was really an alley)

Nov. 9, 2013

A diorama of the 'Shootout at the O.K. Corral' measures about a foot square and places the showdown in a dirt-packed alley. The miniature display can be seen Thursday at Salisbury House & Gardens. / Special to the Register

Author Jeff Guinn

We’ll never know exactly what happened during those famous noisy seconds on Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Ariz.

But we can get a pretty good idea this Thursday at the next History Series event at Salisbury House & Gardens, where historian Jeff Guinn will talk about his book “The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral and How It Changed the American West.” Visitors can watch various movie clips of the fight (with various degrees of accuracy) and study a tiny sculptural diorama, which makes one thing clear:

“There wasn’t really a corral,” said Harry Bookey, who with his wife, Pamel Bass-Bookey, commissioned the diorama by Doug Cohen.

The scene measures about a foot square and places the showdown in a dirt-packed alley between a boarding house and a low building with gray clapboard siding. (The closest corral was a few doors down.) A horse bolts out of the line of fire between the outlaws and the three black-clad Earp brothers, Virgil, Morgan and Wyatt. John “Doc” Holliday stands at their side.

Turns out, the shootout is the third act of itty-bitty violence the Bookeys have brought to the mansion-museum. Last summer they loaned out two dioramas by the Italian artist Mario Venturi, who re-created “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” made famous by Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, and the 13th century Battle of Montaperti, which figured into Dante’s “The Divine Comedy.” The scenes took years to make, with dozens of custom-made metal figurines whose smallest details were painted with a single-hair brush.

But the scholarship was even more painstaking, even for the relatively simple skirmish at (or near) the O.K. Corral. And ultimately, it’s the history that sparked the Bookeys’ interest. They co-founded the History Series in 2000 with Charles and Rusty Edwards. For the last few years, co-sponsors Fred and Charlotte Hubbell have stepped up to help, too.

Together they planned this year’s lineup, which started Oct. 3 with a talk about exploring the Amazon, continues with Thursday’s visit from Guinn, and wraps up with two more next spring:

April 17: Heath Lee, a recent Southern transplant to Des Moines, will discuss her forthcoming book about Jefferson Davis’ daughter, “Winnie Davis: Daughter of the Lost Cause.” One of the Davis descendants plans to attend.

May 1: Michael Neibert will talk about his book “Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I.”